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March 07, 2013

Meet 60GHz Wi-Fi, the insanely fast future of wireless networking
Get ready for a ridiculous boost in wireless networking speed. Two camps are competing to deliver wireless components that are at least seven times faster than today's gigabit (IEEE 802.11ac) routers. By harnessing spectrum in the unlicensed 60GHz frequency band, these devices will be capable of offering more bandwidth than hardwired USB 3.0 connections.

Microsoft to update its core Windows 8 apps well before 'Blue'
Microsoft officials have acknowledged publicly that the Windows team is aware that the first-party apps on Windows 8 and Windows RT have room for improvement. Many users have been especially disappointed in the Mail and Music apps for the product, claiming they feel more like betas than full featured, polished products. Even though they're free, these apps, developed by the Windows team, just aren't very good, many of us Windows 8/Windows RT users feel.

Strategies of Deceit
Generally speaking, if your competition can accurately anticipate your next move, you will lose, and lose big. Consider the amount of energy going into keeping the timing and placement of the Normandy and Inchon landings a secret, not to mention Pearl Harbor. Preventing your competition/adversaries from correctly anticipating your next move is a very large part of strategic management, indeed.

Hyper-V Deep Dive, Part 3: Networking Enhancements
You do pay some penalties for the benefits of SR-IOV, particularly in the area of flexibility. If you're using the Hyper-V extensible switch and have configured port ACLs and perhaps one or more extensions, these are all bypassed with SR-IOV, as the switch never sees SR-IOV traffic. You also can't do teaming of SR-IOV capable NICs on the host; you can, however, have two (or more) physical SR-IOV NICs in the host, present these to VMs and in the VM create a NIC team out of the virtual NICs for performance and failover.

Car X.O. cares about health
“We’ve only begun to explore the potential of SYNC, he told the audience. “We’re not just catering to the entertainment needs of our customers, but contributing to their wellbeing.” Since the launch of SNYC, Ford, which has a blind spot monitor and a lane-keeping aid, has partnered with several technology companies to make other health products available, such as technology that can track driver behavior and distraction.

Dell Puts RNA Networks Assets to Use in New Product
The Fluid Cache 1.0 software technology sits between the Express Flash solid-state drives attached directly to the PowerEdge 12G servers. The software essentially is an application accelerator that creates a high-speed caching pool to facilitate quicker reading and writing of data from SSDs. The software layer replicates data in cache, which improves response time without compromising the data.

Stuxnet Two Years Older Than Previously Believed
The 18-page report reveals that development of the malware dates back to 2005, although it first appeared in the wild in 2007. It wasn’t identified until July 2010. What explains the two-year lead time? An extended refinement process was probably part of what made Stuxnet and its precursor, Flame, so sophisticated. The exploits these bits of malware pulled off without attracting attention were "nothing short of amazing," Mikko H. Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure, a security firm in Helsinki, Finland, told IEEE Spectrum

Conquering confidence killers
Joanna Barsh, senior director at McKinsey & Company and author of How Remarkable Women Lead, says her biggest career challenge was getting out of her own way: "I was -- and am -- plagued by limiting fears … and because my sponsors were not versed in how to interact with such a creature, they took my 'no thank you' at face value and offered their opportunity to the next person -- a man who invariably grabbed it. It turns out that the challenge of getting out of my own way was the biggest one I ever faced."

What inspires your work-at-home policies?
Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer have made up their minds on telecommuting, but your company may be debating whether to allow it. Or, perhaps, your company does allow work from home but would like to improve the process. What should you be assessing? What are the perils and benefits? What role does your company culture play in success or failure?

People are strange(rs)
The concept of recognizing and knowing your customer is, in essence, an ancient concept. Having a clear view of who your customer is and what he or she is actually buying (or intending to buy), has proven to be a serious business advantage over the years. You do not want your customer to feel like a stranger.

Quote for the day:"Make no small plans for they have not the power to stir men's blood." -- Niccolo Machiavelli